


The Ever-Present Strain of Longing

by iihappydaysii



Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angry Sex, Arguing, Canon Rewrite, Explicit Sexual Content, First Kiss, First Time, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Sexual Tension, and his ickiness, jamie pov, mentions of jack randall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:42:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24718468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iihappydaysii/pseuds/iihappydaysii
Summary: When Lord John goes to Jamie for advice about his former lover, Percy, tensions finally come to a head.
Relationships: Jamie Fraser/Lord John Grey
Comments: 9
Kudos: 117





	The Ever-Present Strain of Longing

**Author's Note:**

> most of the dialogue is taken from this scene in botb, some isn't of course, and it's all from jamie's pov instead of john's as it is in the book
> 
> beta by mistresspandora, as usual, because she is the bet 
> 
> oh and happy birthday john grey ;)

It had been a long day for Jamie Fraser. He felt the exhaustion of it not only in his limbs but in his mind. It had almost been a relief when Lord John had come to the stable to press him for advice on a personal matter. If not a relief, the major’s presence provided a distraction. It always did in one way or another.

They both settled on wooden stools facing each other. As Lord John explained his concerns, Jamie listened intently. Though he did not let Grey see how intently, lest he make false inferences of meaning from that intensity.

“And that is my dilemma,” Grey said, finally ending his story. “I am the only witness. Without my testimony, he will not be convicted, nor condemned. If I lie before the court-martial, that is the end of my own honor. If I do not—it will be the end of his life or freedom.”

Grey’s shoulders loosened like an animal from whom a yoke had been lifted. Jamie knew how unburdening one's mind of a worry could come as a powerful relief. Ever since Claire went back through the stones, he hadn’t known that relief himself. From his family in Scotland, to the men at Ardsmuir, to Willie, to Claire and the child he’d never know, to the persistent feeling that he was no longer the man he had once been, one hefty burden had been laid upon another upon another with no way to remove the pain of the weight. 

Fraser looked down at the ground. “This man is your brother, your kin. But kin by law, not blood. Have ye feeling for him, beyond the obligation of kin? Kindness? Love?”

He thought of his own brother by law, Ian Murray. He had both a great deal of kindness and love for the man. There was little he would not do for Ian if it were within his power to help.

Grey stood and began to pace, his steps uncertain rather than the usual control he displayed. “Not love. And not kindness.”

“Will it be honor then?” Jamie’s voice had come out lower than he intended. He stood from the stool and the lantern light fell warm on his face. 

“Yes, but what is the path of honor, here?”

Jamie shrugged. “What is honor for me may not be honor for you, Major.” His tongue felt heavy as it fit around the title.  _ Major.  _ “For me—for us—our honor  _ is  _ our family. I could not see a close kinsman condemned, no matter his crime. Mind, infamous crime would be dealt with. But by the man’s chief, by his own kin—not by a court.”

Grey stood still, blinking in the soft glow of the lantern. The features of his pleasantly-arranged face pinched in thought. Then his countenance eased as if he had made his mind up about something. “It is honor—but not the honor of my reputation. The end of it is that I cannot in honor see him hanged for a crime whose guilt I share—and from whose consequences I am escaped by chance alone.”

With those few words, the pieces of everything Grey had said to Jamie up until this moment fell into place. Something squeezed tight in Jamie’s belly, making him stiffen. “A crime whose guilt ye share,” he managed. 

An image came to Jamie unbidden—a tangle of muscles and masculine limbs, a large, rough hand pressing John Grey down onto a mattress. A knot filled Jamie’s throat, leaving him feeling as if he were choking.

“This man,” Jamie forced out the words. “He is not only your stepbrother, but… your…” Why was it hard to say? Because he did not know what to call it or because he did not want to call it anything at all. “Your catamite?”

Jamie did not have a better word for it.

“He was my lover, yes,” Grey’s voice was feather-soft, fond despite it all. 

John Grey’d had a lover? Jamie had just assumed he had not. Now, he could see that was naive, but Grey did still come to visit Jamie often. Every time, there remained that sense of feeling about the man whenever he was near—the ever-present strain of longing. Yet, whenever Grey left Helwater for London, he’d been returning to the bed of his  _ lover. _ Jamie choked on the knot in his throat again.

“You do not believe that men can love one another?” Grey asked, supplying his interpretation of the noise that tore from Jamie’s throat.

“No.” The word fell hard as a striking hammer. Was he saying no they can’t or no he doesn’t believe that? It had to be the former because Jack Randall had said he loved him and… “I do not.” Jamie pressed his lips together. “Not in that fashion, at least. The love of brothers, of kin—aye, of course. Or of soldiers. We have—spoken of that.”

“Sparta? Yes.” Grey leveled a cold smile in Jamie’s direction that he did not feel he deserved. He had only repeated common sentiment. 

It was hard not to think of the very different smile Grey had given Jamie that evening in Ardsmuir when they’d fought the battle of Thermopylae with scrounged-up trinkets on a drawn map spread over Grey’s desk. A time when they had been friends and casual touches and warm glances passed easily between them.

“The love of Leonidas for his men, they for each other as warriors. Aye, that’s real enough. But to—to…  _ use  _ a man in such a fashion…” His stomach jerked and twisted. Jamie had been  _ used  _ in such a fashion many years ago. What he had felt then, even when it had been pleasurable, had known nothing of love. 

Anger burned in Jamie’s chest, though he was uncertain who beyond Jack Randall he was angry with. He’d known this of John Grey for years, so why only now did he feel a powerful urge to scream, to pick up the stool and hurl it at the wall, let the wood splinter apart under the force? _To use a man in such a fashion?_ he recounted his own words. With Randall, Jamie had been used indeed and thoroughly, but who had been used between John and his stepbrother? Was he angry at John or _for_ him? Did it matter? 

“Think so, do you?” Grey’s voice was strained. “You’ve read Plato, I know. And scholar that you are, I would suppose that you’ve heard of the Sacred Band of Thebes. Perhaps?”

Jamie clenched his jaw, felt blood rush to his cheeks. “I have.”

“Lovers,” he snarled. “All soldiers. All lovers. Each man and his beloved.  _ Who would desert his beloved, or fail him in the hour of danger? _ ”

Jamie was staring at him, eyes fixed to the other’s, who was looking back now with palpable fierceness. He felt a clench in his gut that climbed his spine and tingled in his cheeks. It was not unlike the feeling he’d experienced when the major’s hand had taken his those years ago. Not unlike what he would feel— _ God help me— _ under the touch of a beautiful woman.

“And what do you say to that, Mr. Fraser?”

What would he say? To Grey… what  _ had  _ Grey been talking about exactly? The words and their logic erased by that unsettling sensation. Or how should he respond to himself? That answer he knew quite well. “What I would say is that only men who lack the ability to possess a woman—or cowards who fear them—must resort to such feeble indecencies to relieve their lust.” He thought of his men at Ardsmuir, how some of them had found comfort in each other. How he’d hear them at night and grow hard in his breeches and hate himself for it. How after so long alone, cold, untouched, he had felt John’s hand and  _ wanted. “ _ And to hear ye speak of honor in the same breath… Since ye ask, it curdles my wame.” He did feel sick. A twisting and cold sensation burrowed between his ribs. He was different from those men, from John Grey, from Jack Randall. Those feelings couldn’t be true because he was none of the things he laid out before John in argument. To be  _ this,  _ he had to be those things, did he not? “And what, my lord, d’ye say to that?”

“I say that I do not speak of the indecencies of lust—and if  _ you  _ wish to speak of such things, allow me to note that I have seen much grosser indecencies inflicted upon women by men, and so have you. We have both fought with armies. I said ‘love.’ And what do you think love is, then, that it is reserved only to men who are drawn to women?”

Grey was not wrong and it made him furious. Didn’t John Grey understand what Jamie was trying to do here? What he needed to do to keep himself from breaking into pieces,  _ finally,  _ in this damnable barn? 

In this moment, Jamie felt. He did not die on the battlefield of Culloden, but that part of his soul  _ had.  _ And yet, this bloody English sodomite made him  _ feel.  _ He could not forgive him for it. 

“I have loved my wife beyond life itself, and know that love for a gift from God.” The memory returned with a powerful force. The way she’d dragged him back from the dead after what Randall had done. Randall who had not only hurt him but Fergus, who had been no more than a child. He had been so damn small. “Ye dare say to me that the feelings of a—a—pervert who cannot deal with women as a man, but minces about and preys upon helpless boys—that this is  _ love? _ ” 

“You accuse me of preying upon  _ boys? _ ” Obvious disgust painted Grey’s words as he reached toward his dagger. “I tell you, sir, were you armed, you would answer for that, here and now!”

Jamie had not meant Grey himself, but it didn’t matter. The fury in Grey was obvious, his small body, tight and drawn back. For some reason, all Jamie could do was try to breathe through that rising, terrifying feeling. If he made himself big enough, perhaps there would be enough room inside him to hold the feeling. “Draw on me and be damned. Armed or no, ye canna master me.”

“You think not? I tell you,” Grey said, his voice low but full of barely concealed passion. “I tell you, sir—were I to take you to my bed—I could make you scream. And by God, I would do it.”

Jamie could never be big enough to hold this.

He lunged forward, grabbing onto Grey’s coat. He slammed him against the barn wall with a hard snap. Then, he pulled back his arm, to swing down his fist, end it once and for all. This goddamn temptation that had been following him since that cold night at Ardsmuir. 

He could end it or…

Jamie’s fist slammed hard into the boards near Grey’s head. A hot sob tore from Jamie’s lips as his body loomed over Grey’s, not touching but nearly. He couldn’t do it anymore. He couldn’t bloody do it anymore. 

Grey’s mouth tasted like wine. The rough scratch of stubble against his lips made him shiver and then thrill. With rough hands, he spun John around and pinned him against the boards. He tugged down the man’s breeches, revealing a soft, pale arse.

“Fraser, what the devil are you doing?”

Jamie did not respond other than to spit in the palm of his hand.

He ran his wet hand over his own stiff prick, then poised himself right there, ready. “This what ye wanted?”

“Yes,” Grey choked out.

“Aye. Good,” Jamie said, then, as if it had been simple all along, he took John Grey for his own.

When Grey cried out, Jamie threw a hand over his mouth to keep him quiet. It would not do for anyone to find them rutting in here. 

He had not been inside another since Geneva. Perhaps, he had not been inside another who wanted him for him since Claire. But Jamie would not, could not, think of Claire now. He would not allow there to be anything outside this moment. Nothing but the warm acceptance of John's body. The feel of hot breath on his fingers. The muffled sound of his own grunts as he bit into Grey’s shoulder.

Finally. 

Jamie had not known how badly he’d needed this until he had it. To want and be wanted. To forget pain and loneliness and the big gaping blackness of an unplanned future. To exist entirely within the present and within his own body and within John Grey’s. Jamie did, however, wish there were no clothes between them. That it was merely hot skin beneath his own. Still, this is what they could have and it was good. Damn good.

Jamie’s hand slipped from Grey’s mouth, and Grey whined, “Fraser. Oh, God.” And there was the sound of furious tugging. “Fraser. God, Jamie.” 

Jamie had not known until that moment that a man would clench like a woman when he found his pleasure. That alone was enough for Jamie to find his own. To empty himself into Grey with the man’s name loose and warm on his lips. 

They separated and situated themselves in silence, then Jamie found words again, “I hope I didna hurt ye.”

A fragmented laugh spilled out of Grey. “I shall feel it for quite some time, but no, you did not hurt me.”

Jamie finished doing up his breeches and breathed out a gentle sigh. He didn’t understand what they just did, not fully. But he did understand that it had felt quite nice and God had yet to strike him dead. “I have wanted to do that for a verra long time. Since Ardsmuir.”

Grey snorted. “Is that why you threatened to kill me?”

“Aye. That is precisely why.”

A small smile flickered on Grey's face as he tucked a loose strand of hair into its ribbon. “Was it as terrible as you imagined?”

“Nay, Major. I dinna ken what this means, what this makes me, but I would be a dishonest man if I said I didna find a great deal of pleasure in what we just did. Far superior to the shouting and the griping of earlier this evening.”

“I have to say, sir. I agree.”

Jamie looked down at his scuffed boots, then back up at Grey. He  _ was _ a handsome man, wasn’t he? “I am sorry for the situation with yer stepbrother. I hope it can be resolved with as little hurt as possible.”

Grey looked at Jamie, his face still flushed from the sex, and his eyes warm as coals. He smiled and it was lovely. “You really should fuck me more often, Fraser. You’re quite amenable after.”


End file.
